Study suggests kids should unplug before sleep

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Kids who regularly plugged into
social networking sites before bedtime reported sleeping nearly
an hour less on school nights than those who rarely connected
online, a new study shows.

"Using technology in the bedroom may result in sleep loss,
delays in initiating sleep, daytime sleepiness and more," the
study's lead author, Teresa Arora, told Reuters Health in an
email.

"In turn, this may affect daytime performance, particularly
at school," Arora, from Weill Cornell Medical College in Doha,
Qatar, said.

The researchers found kids ages 11 to 13 slept significantly
less when they frequently communicated on a cell phone, surfed
the Internet, played video games, watched television, listened
to music and even if they used a computer to study before
hitting the sack.

Social networking was associated with the biggest loss of
sleep. Those who said they usually connected to friends online
before getting into bed reported sleeping the least - an average
of 8 hours and 10 minutes a night - compared with 9 hours and 2
minutes among those who never connected.

Earlier studies have linked sleep deprivation to obesity,
depression, difficulty regulating emotions and lower grades. A
Chinese study published last month found staying up late may
raise teens' blood pressure (see Reuters Health story of
December 17, 2013 here: http://reut.rs/JLyemQ).

For the current study, the researchers analyzed surveys on
sleep and technology habits completed by 738 students at seven
randomly selected schools in the Midlands region of England in
2010.

Kids who frequently viewed TV before bed were four times
more likely to report waking up several times during the night
than non-viewers, and frequent social networkers were three
times more likely to wake up a lot. Kids who regularly played
video games or listened to music at bedtime had significantly
more difficulty falling asleep, the researchers reported in
Sleep Medicine.

Teenagers' sleep schedules naturally tend to shift as a
result of feeling alert later at night and having trouble
falling asleep. But technology may worsen the tendency to burn
the midnight oil, Arora and her colleagues wrote.

The findings came as no surprise to Dr. Nanci Yuan, medical
director of the Sleep Center at Lucile Packard Children's
Hospital in Palo Alto, California. She was not involved in the
new study.

"The advent of technology has made every age group, but
especially teenagers, have difficulties with their sleep," Yuan,
who also studies sleep disorders at Stanford University, told
Reuters Health.

"We're seeing more sleep-deprivation problems in society as
a whole, and we're seeing it more in teenagers."

Children from 11 to 13 years old need between 10 and 11
hours of continuous sleep a night for optimal health, she said.
She recommended adolescents shut down all electronics, ideally
removing them from the bedroom, at least one hour, and
preferably two, before turning in.

"We have to make sleep a priority as important as good
nutrition and exercise," she said.

Christina Calamaro similarly stressed the need to unplug at
least an hour before lights out. She has studied the effect of
technology on adolescent sleep at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont
Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware but was not
involved in the current study.

Calamaro called on healthcare professionals to do more to
educate parents about children's need for uninterrupted sleep.

"We need to teach adolescents boundaries with technology,"
she told Reuters Health. "We need to really drive home that
message to parents about modeling sleep behavior in their home."